Lessons Two and Three
Fermentation in a Bag
One type of macronutrient that you learned about in the last lesson is called a protein.
Why do we need to eat proteins?
Proteins come in many different shapes and sizes, and perform many different functions in the body.
Where do humans usually get their proteins from?
During the last lesson, you used a paper plate to create a balanced meal.
Please get your plate.
Where are your sources of protein?
Working on the other (blank) side of the plate, use the space to describe the percentages of your protein sources.
Assuming the plate represents 100% of your protein sources, divide the plate into sections, where each section is a percentage of your protein source.
For example, if 50% of your protein source is beef, 25% cheese, and 25% chicken, then…
Beef
(50%)
Chicken
(25%)
Cheese
(25%)
Use this infographic to help remind you of protein sources
One reason we eat proteins is because we need the building blocks of proteins to build our own proteins.
Hemoglobin is an example of a transport protein. It transports oxygen.
Do you know where hemoglobin is found?
Heme is a molecule that performs many functions in the body and is very important. It’s found attached to hemoglobin.
Heme binds to the oxygen atoms that you breathe, carries that oxygen in your bloodstream, and drops it off at all of your cells.
Heme is also what helps give animal meat
its delicious and distinctive taste!
When food scientists learned this, they realized that adding heme to food made of plants would make the plants taste like meat, and might help people switch to a plant-based diet.
But where could they get heme from?
Getting it from an animal defeats the purpose.
Scientists realized that heme is also produced in plant roots!
So they extracted heme from soy plant roots, with the hopes of adding that heme into food to make it taste more like meat.
Heme found here!
It worked, but they couldn’t get enough heme from plants using this extraction technique.
They needed to find a way to produce A LOT of heme.
Heme found here!
They found a way to do it…
Fermentation
Summary
Scientists figured out that they can take the DNA for the heme protein from the cells in the roots of soy plants, stick that DNA into yeast cells, ferment the yeast, and get A LOT of the heme protein.
Time to be scientists!
Materials List
Let’s conduct our experiment!
Name | Feedstock | Height of Bag (in cm) |
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What patterns can we see in the data?
Title:
Y-axis:
X-axis:
Which feedstock produced the least gas?
Which feedstock reacted the fastest?
Which feedstock produced the most gas?
Wrap Up
Journal in your own words.